


Rekindle

by orphan_account



Series: On My Block One Shots [3]
Category: On My Block (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:54:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23115799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Summer turns into more silence. Sometimes, it’s easier to just let things fade away. Sometimes, it’s too painful to be around people who you went through so much with.---A short nostalgic fic about what I think it will take for the crew to reunite.
Relationships: Cesar Diaz/Monse Finnie, Jasmine Flores/Ruby Martinez
Series: On My Block One Shots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1018686
Comments: 4
Kudos: 55





	Rekindle

At first it was phone calls, facetimes, and romantic letters.   
Then it was, “I can’t talk right now, I’m too busy” and keeping secrets and breaking promises.   
What happens when the leader leaves? Someone has to take his place.   
And it’s easier for Cesar to do it when he’s alone. And they’ve been there for him. His whole life.   
It’s not that they break up. It’s more that they stop seeing each other.   
Summer turns into visiting her friends from school and internships designed to get her ahead of the game for college.   
Summer turns into jumping other people in to build up the Santos, to make sure the Prophet$ don’t get a chance to start another war.   
Summer turns into more silence. Sometimes, it’s easier to just let things fade away. Sometimes, it’s too painful to be around people who you went through so much with.   
It’s different with Ruby and Jasmine. Maybe it’s because she’s always been so different. More likely it’s because she wasn’t there through the tough shit – not really. She didn’t see the dead bodies. She wasn’t the person he took a bullet for. There’s more space to recover.   
Jamal knew this would happen at some point. If he actually stood up for himself. If he was able to life his life without another disaster blowing up in his face. He’s got razor sharp focus and Coach appreciates it.

The first time they all see each other again is not a happy circumstance.   
Funerals are apparently something that bring them together. One. Two. And now Three.   
Abuelita wasn’t supposed to die. But then she did.   
And Geny invited the old crew without even thinking about it.   
Ruby didn’t expect them to show up. Maybe Jamal. They still made awkward eye contact at school sometimes… and he was still weirdly close with his grandmother, but Cesar hadn’t been around. Well, he’s always been around, just more in a scary gang leader kind of way than the friend you have lunch with. And Monse hasn’t even sort of been around. Freeridge hadn’t called her their own in two years.   
But Abuelita passed at the end of May. A heart attack. And the funeral was in June and it wasn’t like any of them really felt like they could not say goodbye to her.   
It’s painful to all be in the same room again. Cesar stands in the back, trying and failing to not stare at Monse. Monse looks so out of place in the room full of the people she grew up with. She’s outgrown us. Ruby is front and center, talking to family. Jasmine by his side.  
Jamal walks up to Monse. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”   
She nods. “Boarding school is pretty busy.”   
“You know,” Jamal sighs. “I was still texting her.”   
“I haven’t talked to Ruby in over a year but me and Abuelita were still tight.”   
“Was she still drinking?”  
“And smoking weed and eating whatever the fuck she wanted.”   
It was weird to be talking like this like old times.   
“I need a drink.” Monse sighed.   
It wasn’t like she hadn’t immediately looked for him when she walked in. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what had happened to him. It wasn’t information you could help knowing, words thrown around in the Hood like second nature “Lil’ Spooky runs the Santos. Lil’ Spooky is squaring off with the Prophet$.”   
She’d tried so hard to keep him out of the gang and now he was willingly throwing himself into it. She couldn’t face him sober.   
She didn’t plan on staying for as long as she did.   
None of them planned on being the last people at the Martinez residence helping Geny clean up.   
None of them planned on speaking let alone trading Abuelita stories in Ruby’s backyard.   
But they did.   
And it was like rekindling an old fireplace. A bit rusty but once you got a spark it roared.   
And then it was rekindling old flames.   
They were so different now, weren’t they? She was applying to Harvard, Princeton and Yale. Double major in Creative Writing and Computer Science. He was another Freeridge drop out, memorizing drug routes instead of chemistry reactions.   
But it was easier while tipsy to forget who he was and remember who he was. Her first love. Her only love.   
He couldn’t help but want her as much as he had the day she left. His heart beat for her. She was still his life, even if she wasn’t in it.   
He offered to walk her home and she let him in her room without even thinking. Old patterns are easy to fall into even years later. He kissed rougher. She smelled more flowery.   
He was better than she remembered.  
She was better than he remembered. 

And then, there was a call from Jamal. Unexpected but another mystery. It wasn’t that Abuelita had died from a heart attack, someone murdered her.


End file.
